a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

Randy Foye.

Random Bits, Pieces, and Notes:** I *think* I saw a tweet earlier about how Foye turned down more money elsewhere to sign with the Jazz, but I can’t find it now so I don’t know if I imagined it.

Flip side:

** The most interesting fact on Randy Foye’s Wikipedia:

Foye has the rare condition situs inversus, which means his organs are arranged as the mirror image of a normal person’s: for example, his heart is in the right side of his chest rather than the left. However, it is not expected that this fact will have an impact on his game. (Wikipedia)

** Foye is heavily involved in charity work through his Randy Foye Foundation.

** Foye as a child:

The little boy above lost his dad in a motorcycle accident at the age of three, and then lost his teenaged mom, who got into a white van in front of their house one day and was never seen again (Foye says “kidnapped and killed”), at the age of six. He grew up bouncing between the homes of his grandmothers and aunts and uncles.

He has a tattoo of his mom’s likeness over his heart, along with the words “In loving memory of Regina Foye.”

Foye says he’ll be in the shower after practice or a game, glance down at his chest and wonder what his mother would think of him now, how she’d react to his triumphs. “I’ll take the bar of soap and go over her again and again,” he says. “I clean my mother thoroughly.” (ESPN)

His foundation also sponsors a run/walk charity event called “Regina’s Run.” This is the logo for the event:

It’s heartbreaking when you notice that the child in the logo is wearing Randy’s #4.

** Foye will be going into his seventh year next season. His highest field goal percentage for a season was during his rookie year…and it was .434. He has had a couple of good three-point shooting years and Kevin O’Connor, by all appearances, has been stockpiling three-point shooters this summer.

This is somewhat sad-amusing, as the Jazz don’t shoot threes. I know some fans/1280 employees say Tyrone Corbin didn’t have time/summer league/training camp/lockout/etc. to implement more than a “Throw to Big Al” offense last year, and hope that he will diversify the offense this year. Sorry (to the fans), here’s Jazz Assistant Coach Jeff Hornacek on 1280 a few days ago:

Our offense isn’t geared to shoot three pointers. In the summer [league], I think we scored, in 40 minutes, I think we scored 90 points one time. I think we only took six three-point shots and made two of them. So you go back to the whole thing when I was playing back in the day in Phoenix, we were averaging 120 points a game and we didn’t shoot threes…I don’t think there’s a correlation [between three pointers and] scoring. We do need to have that weapon, but our offense isn’t one that we’re designing three-point shots.

Let’s look at our three acquisitions this summer so far:
Mo Williams: shot .364 from downtown and .436 overall last year
Marvin Williams: shot .389 from downtown and .432 overall last year
Randy Foye: shot .386 from downtown and .398 overall last year

So these three guys are three-point threats, but will not really be asked to shoot the three. It is improbable, however, that they will never shoot while on the floor. Looking at their overall FG%, you don’t necessarily want them to shoot unless they’re shooting threes. Conundrum.

** Remember back in March, when Corbin promoted Jamaal Tinsley to Point Guard #2 because Tinsley was playing so well and Earl Watson responded by saying it was unfortunate this happened after the trade deadline? (By now, we all know that Corbin doesn’t exactly handle unhappy players well, and by the next game Earl was back to being Point Guard #2 and Tinsley was getting only garbage time. But I digress.)